written and directed by Michel Gondry
Country: France
Year:
2006 Duration: 105 '
Genre: Comedy
Cast: Gael García Bernal (Stéphane Miroux), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Stephanie), Alain Chabat (Guy), Miou Miou (Christine Miroux ), Aurélia Petit (Martine), Sacha Bourdos (Serge), Pierre Vaneck (Mr. Pouchet), Emma de Caunes (Zoe), Stéphane Metzger (Sylvain), Alain de Moyencourt (Gerard)
Producer: Georges Bermann
Music: Jean-Michel Bernard
Photo: Jean-Louis Bompoint
Editing: Juliette Welfling
Costumes: Florence Fontaine
SYNOPSIS "The Science of Sleep" follows the misadventures of Stéphane (Gael García Bernal), a young graphic artist whose brain emits a continuous television program in conflict with reality. Landed in Paris with the hope of a good job and after coming into contact with a new neighbor, Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the possibility of a romance will find its way into his dream world of Carton.
When reality and fiction interfere.
When digital technology has changed the way we do and even watch movies, Michel Gondry has had the audacity to drink more traditional sources of cinematic illusion, so much so that in "The Science of Sleep" not only We can feel the echo of the extraordinary work of the great stop-motion animators (especially the Czechs), but their ability to craft fascination would lead even the patriarch himself Méliès and his conception of art as a continuous film and captivating trick magic.
Because, with this film, Gondry has confirmed that this is perhaps the most interesting directors 'modern' to find the entrance to own land in which the obsession to do something else gives way to the ability to offer their own world that is truly alive. Occurred already in "Forget Me!" And "The Science of Sleep" is confirmed.
course, this is not a film for all audiences, requiring the delivery of the viewer to a game in which any resemblance to reality is pure coincidence. But in return, you get a story that restores the adjective "romantic" its true and real meaning, in which the beauty suddenly appears in the frame when least expected, and typical to the question the New Wonder ("How I have done?") loses all importance: we do not care "how" (because many times, its own aesthetic craft it clearly shows), but simply enjoy the wonderful horse rag rides on the keyboard, the water made with cellophane, toilet paper tubes turned into buildings ... No matter: this is cinema and always has been, what happens is that, in both routine mediocrity see, we had forgotten.
As in his previous film, the convoluted love story, complicated and impossible strangely, manages to be convincing, largely because both Gael García Bernal as Charlotte Gainsbourg life filled with characters of unpredictable behavior. Fascinated girl's smile when he imagines how it can make a cloud, or the look of despair when he thinks he is losing his neighbor, his love, are like a more "French" of Jim Carrey and interpreted by Kate Winslet in "Forget Me!". The secondary, especially coworkers García Bernal's character are in this case, and with the exception of Alain Chabat, little more than a chorus that provides the comic counterpoint, even ordinary, which is the house brand and it works enhancer of the romantic effect of the tape.
The most curious, in short, is that in its insatiable quest for modernity, Gondry has finished falling into the essentials of film, which was there from the beginning, and with his eyes, has made bringing it to us back, full of life. "The Science of Sleep" is set to true reflection, but it does not go away at all: there is a connection, the similarities between the dream world and the cinema, which continues to be a kind of sleep can put into images create beauty. Miguel A.
Delgado
